Swedish in Central London

We left at 08:00 to get the train to London. We attended a suddenly very crowded Swedish lesson with a totally different teacher (whose English-speaking accent is kind of hard to understand, sometimes, due some some vowel oddities, and who has some odd ideas about what constitutes a noun, but never mind) and Linnea's presence made much more of a disruption than it did last week even though she was actually quieter and calmer.

However, before enrolling in the lessons and paying for them, we checked that we could bring Linnea along and were told it was ok, so I'm squashing the guilt down into a sleeping-bag-like stuff-sack and leaving it there. It will be good for Linnea if her parents can speak a language or two other than English. And besides, it will be good for US.

A disadvantage of a load of people only showing up today and not for the first lesson meant that we repeated half what we did already. And not the other half, because there were too many people there.

Then we went to Hyde Park, where we were suprised by a concert for peace which we avoided due to loud noise and toddler, and were joined by Dave and Gideon and Jen, and we had a lovely sit and a lovely wander and a lovely cuppa and a lovely chat, and I have had about half of a heavy burden of parental responsibility removed, and I can now go about removing the other half, with a bit of luck.

London's not half bad if you avoid the Tube and stick ot the parks. I could get used to this. We have to go in every second week or so for ages anyway, so we might as well use the return ticket to have a good time.

Remind me later to post about proposed writing projects, scrumptious mummies, the desexualisation of mothers and why I am particularly annoyed by it, and how much I love my red shoes.

Banana baby song

Linnea is asleep, and for those of you keeping tabs on how well I'm nourishing my baby, she has had no bananas today (Yes, we have no bananas, we have no bananas today!) Those of you going "Huh?" will be interested to note that I was recently offered unsolicited advice here and I paid it the heed I usually do unsolicited advice - that is to say, I was indignant and infuriated at first, because I started to think "Wow, have I been feeding her too many bananas? What if she DIES in the NIGHT? someone's grandmother did, so my BABY might too! Onoes! Bananas KILL!" and then I recovered and was all like y'know "WHAT a drive-by mommying like WOW."

Only in English. Pardon me, I have no idea why I came over all funny, it could be because...

The baby is asleep! She went to sleep on her way home from the playground after dinner, at about 20:10, and stayed asleep when Rob laid her in her cot (fully clothed, we do NOT disturb sleeping babies in this house, though we do remove trailing bits of string and sharp knives). We are ecstatic. And a bit shocked.

I am scrumptious! It's like yummy, only refers to actual flavour as judged by infant. Today, Linnea wanted a lot of feeding, so I must be particularly tasty.

I wore my fabulous red shoes. I sloshed a bit of polish on them before going out because I let them get horribly worn down once before and I don't want to do that again. I should probably clean them properly with a leather-cleaner, then polish them again, but oof, the effort, no.

Still to come: proposed writing projects (oh, the irony!) and the desexualisation of mothers and why I am particularly annoyed by it.

Linnea just woke crying. Looks like that was a delayed afternoon nap, not a bedtime.

We got the train to town

Reading West Station, about 08:15 am